anthropophagi

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n.pl. Man eaters; cannibals.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. Plural of anthropophagus.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

The plural of Latin anthropophagus, from Greek ἀνθρωποϕάγος "man-eating", English since 1581 (as an ethnonym). Use of the singular anthropophagus is rare.

Examples

He stared at it in amaze, his brain a racing wild-fire of hypotheses to account for this far-journeyer who had adventured the night of space, threaded the stars, and now rose before him and above him, exhumed by patient anthropophagi, pitted and lacquered by its fiery bath in two atmospheres.

And through all this he drifted, ever pursued by the flitting shadows of the anthropophagi, themselves ghosts of evil that dared not face him in battle but that knew that, soon or late, they would feed on him.

And through all this he drifted, ever pursued by the flitting shadows of the anthropophagi, themselves ghosts of evil that dared not face him in battle but that knew, soon or late, that they would feed on him.

The gaudy maps they passed around at the Spanish court—vast waters with pictures of sea serpents smiling ominously in the waves, weird configurations of terra incognita promising cities strewn with gems, countries populated by Amazons or anthropophagi or talking animals—translated into nothing more than pretty beaches and bad-tempered inhabitants with very sharp arrows.

They say, that we are all anthropophagi, and that the particles which compose our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, having been necessarily dispersed in the atmosphere, become carrots and asparagus, and that it is possible we may have devoured a portion of our ancestors.

Nay, further, we are what we all abhor, anthropophagi, and cannibals, devourers not only of men, but of ourselves; and that not in an allegory but a positive truth: for all this mass of flesh which we behold, came in at our mouths: this frame we look upon, hath been upon our trenchers; in brief, we have devoured ourselves.

And further, it seemeth very likely that the inhabitants of the most part of those countries, by which they must have come any other way besides by the north-west, being for the most part anthropophagi, or men-eaters, would have devoured them, slain them, or, at the leastwise, kept them as wonders for the gaze.